18 December 2014

When were you planning on leaving?
I've already gone.
I could not leave quietly.
I kicked down
the door, the barrier
between you and me.
I kicked in
your front teeth.
I could not leave quietly.
The stories you tell yourself
are loud. They rattle my ear drums.
Do stories expire?
Do they become frail and tired?
Do they become lies?
I've already gone
and told myself the truth,
that I can be brave
and have my own stories,
that I can plan on leaving
at any time, my footsteps
making a pattern
in the snow.

07 December 2014

Retroactive and backdated, gradually expired: I am an endless string of choices; I am riddles made of plastic; I make no sense, my teeth finally puncturing my lip; I am finally horizontal, stretched taut over the world, my womb containing numbers and data, my mind controlling my own version of space-time. I am an old calendar of pinups. I am an address book. I am a fallen tree, in which small animals make houses. Above all, I am useful, but only for so long; I am used, only for so long.

About the Blogger

Shannon Ranee McKeehen, author of Barbra in Shadow and These Cells Are Passages, is a writer and teacher who received her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently at Kent State University, where she is pursuing a PhD in the English: Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice (LRSP) program.